Rhodes

Longing is not simply a matter of distance; it is a condition of presence intensified by absence. In Rhodes, this tension unfolds through fields of saturated color and visceral silence, echoing the spiritual weight of Rothko’s glowing voids. Like Rothko, I am drawn to the edge where color ceases to be descriptive and becomes emotional—a threshold. The black horizon in Rhodes is not an object or a line; it is the memory of something once held, now vanished. The fuchsia flicker above it is the moment it slipped away.

But unlike Rothko’s internal cathedrals of mourning, my longing also seeks a horizon—akin to Edward Hopper’s American solitude. Hopper’s figures are often together, yet oceans apart. My forms are distilled into absence altogether, yet their trace remains in the way the light fails to reach the center, or in the way yellow spills like hope unwilling to die.

There is, too, the serenity of Agnes Martin—a longing so refined it becomes stillness. Her grids and mine may differ in shape, but we both search for a kind of emotional equilibrium: the place where a color, a breath, or a pause can hold the weight of a thousand unsaid words.

In my work, longing is neither romantic nor tragic—it is structural. It builds the painting. It is the silence under the brushstroke, the breath between two pigments, the space that insists: something was here.

Rhodes/ Mixed media/ 21 x 15 cm